What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?

Leon Eckard

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

The work ‘What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?’ is a contemporary interpretation of the famous paper ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat’ (1974) by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel. The work consists of a self-built headset which uses three ultrasonic sensors and a gyroscope, translating the data in real-time into sound — analogous to the sonar of a bat — creating an interactive musical ‘Bat-Theme’. Hence, it is not only questioning the hard problem of consciousness and the line between subjectivity and intersubjectivity, but also the urge to of science, philosophy and technology to solve it, which might be impossible by nature.

Citation

Leon Eckard. 2024. What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15027673

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2024_installations_6,
 abstract = {The work ‘What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?’ is a contemporary interpretation of the famous paper ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat’ (1974) by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel. The work consists of a self-built headset which uses three ultrasonic sensors and a gyroscope, translating the data in real-time into sound — analogous to the sonar of a bat — creating an interactive musical ‘Bat-Theme’. Hence, it is not only questioning the hard problem of consciousness and the line between subjectivity and intersubjectivity, but also the urge to of science, philosophy and technology to solve it, which might be impossible by nature.},
 address = {Utrecht, Netherlands},
 articleno = {6},
 author = {Leon Eckard},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15027673},
 editor = {Laurel Smith Pardue and Palle Dahlstedt},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {September},
 numpages = {5},
 pages = {21--25},
 presentation-video = {https://vimeo.com/912907360},
 title = {What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?},
 track = {Installations},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2024/nime2024_installations_6.pdf},
 year = {2024}
}